EP 20: Legal Design 101: Why Your Contracts Are Creating…

About this episode

In this episode of Beacon Voices, Akshay Verma (COO at SpotDraft) sits down with Tessa Manuello, founder and CEO of Legal Creatives, and co-author of the American Bar Association's new book, Visual Literacy for Lawyers. Tessa Manuello is the founder and CEO of Legal Creatives and co-author of Visual Literacy for Lawyers: A Guide to Enhancing Your Contracts and Practice (ABA), alongside Olga Mack and Lindsay Krolik. Tessa unpacks why contracts can be legally airtight and still fail the people who actually have to use them, why most legal documents haven't visually evolved since the typewriter, and how a few design fundamentals can fix that without turning lawyers into graphic designers. She also walks through her own journey from managing international arbitration cases to building Legal Creatives from scratch. Tessa also digs into the cognitive science behind why dense, cluttered contracts overwhelm the brain. She closes with a claim worth sitting with: not a single legal-design contract has ever landed in court. Topics: 00:00 – Introduction 06:35 – Moving upstream: from dispute resolution to contract design 09:30 – The founding of Legal Creatives 16:51 – How Tessa, Olga, and Lindsay came together to co-author the book 19:58 – The "typewriter era": why legal documents still look decades old 31:38 – What visual design actually changes: icons, color, dividers, font size 36:41 – Bringing AI into the conversation: does anyone need to read the contract anymore? 44:21 – What Tessa hopes people take away from the October 29 webinar 46:32 – Closing: why this is cheap, accessible, and doesn't require becoming a designer Connect with us: Tessa Manuello- linkedin.com/in/tessa-manuello Akshay Verma - https://www.linkedin.com/in/akshay-verma-esq/ SpotDraft - https://www.linkedin.com/company/spotdraft SpotDraft is a leading contract lifecycle management platform that solves your end-to-end contract management issues. Visit https://www.spotdraft.com to learn more. About the podcast: SpotDraft Beacon Voices is hosted by Akshay Verma, COO of SpotDraft, featuring conversations with leaders in law, legal technology, and contracting.